"Leader Reid has come to me a few times and asked me to consider bills on their merits, and I'm always willing to do so. And now I'm asking the same of my colleague, the majority leader," the Bay State junior senator said as this week's GOP speaker.
"Listen, I'm a still fairly new to the Senate, but I've been here long enough to have noticed something: One breakthrough has a way of leading to other breakthroughs. One show of good will has a way of spreading good will."

Brown encouraged the Senate majority leader to support a jobs bill Brown says he introduced in January that would "repeal the 3 percent withholding mandate" aimed at small businesses beginning in 2013.

"If this mandate is not repealed, then all levels of government will suddenly start withholding 3 percent of payments to contractors that provide any product or service to the government."

Brown urged Reid to vote for this "bipartisan opportunity," which "has the support of majorities in the House and the Senate, and also has been endorsed by the president."

When speaking of the White House jobs bill that died in the Senate, Biden attributed its failure to legislative maneuvering saying, "Although 51 senators voted for that jobs bill, our Republican colleagues in the Senate used a procedural requirement that requires it
to have 60 votes, so it failed."

Biden described the fate of the piecemeal strategy that was then used to pass the jobs bill, saying, "we've taken every important piece of the jobs bill and demanded that we have a separate vote."

"But our Republican colleagues in the Senate have voted unanimously to vote down each and every part so far."

The vice president explained Obama's decision to override these decisions.

"We can't wait for the Congress to start acting responsibly, and that's why the president has used his executive power to announce that hundreds of thousands of people will be able to refinance their homes from 6 percent interest rates to 4 percent, saving them an average of $2,000 a year."

Biden spoke of Obama's plans to reduce student loan costs for college graduates so that "no student will have to pay back more than 10 percent of their discretionary income toward their student debt" and spoke of cost-cutting "regulations regarding prescription drugs" as additional measures that will go into effect as a result of Obama's executive
powers.

"If the Republican Congress won't join us, we're going to continue to act on our own to make the changes that we can to bring relief to middle-class families and those aspiring to get in the middle class."

soundoff(62 Responses)

Spike_dawg

$787 Billion spent on the Recovery Act of 2009. Results are records unemployment, record numbers of poor, record home foreclosures, record business closings and a sure defeat in 2012 for Obama. Carter held most of these records and must be happy to have Obama holding them now. Like Carter, Obama will suffer a landslide defeat.

November 5, 2011 01:46 pm at 1:46 pm |

Anonymous

Republicans have been so negative about everything that they have become nothing but noise.

November 5, 2011 01:50 pm at 1:50 pm |

Joanne E. B.

"Quid pro quo." Speak English, Senator. Speak in a tongue we can understand without muddying the meaning with Latin. Or is this just a Teapublican way to misspeak, i.e, lie?

November 5, 2011 01:52 pm at 1:52 pm |

Anthony

If the GOP would just move off its inflexible position of not raising taxes, we can deal with the deficit problem. Otherwise, we should just let the whole Bush tax cuts expire and let Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors to fall to the levels prescribed by the formula Congress wrote almost 15 years ago. According to a CBO report released in June of this year, if Congress would just sit on its hands and do nothing from that point on, the deficits will disappear by the end of 2016. Yes, this means that eliminating the Bush tax cuts and the doc fixes would eliminate the deficits. The Super Committee does not need to find that 1.2 trillion in spending cuts.

November 5, 2011 02:33 pm at 2:33 pm |

caconserv

The leadership of the Senate, the deliberative body of Congress, seems to carry a lot of responsibility for not getting compromise. The administration does not want to follow their own debt commission suggestions. They can not get a budget out of the Senate.
Obama has made a TRUE EFFORT? They preface everything on increasing taxes. Show us the cuts! Give us a budget.

November 5, 2011 02:50 pm at 2:50 pm |

normajean @ verizon ,com

On second thought.....the arrogance of the Republicans to ask for "quid pro quo". When was the last time that they complied with ANYTHING our president asked for the good of the people. They have agreed to NOTHING that the Democratic party has worked hard to produce. They didn't become the "Party of No" by accident!!!!!If I were vulgar, I'd tell them what to do with their request!!!!If I were running things, hell really would freeze over before I'd even look in their direction!!!!

November 5, 2011 02:51 pm at 2:51 pm |

Tree

Rick McDaniel

The Dems are so pathetic. They really think they can spend without end, and it won't matter.

Just ask Greece, how that worked out.

Rick you sound foolish. In order to make money you have to spend monies. The only person that really cares about
the middle class the out President. The GOP and little Scott Brown cares about WALL Street and big money. At less
when they to spend it is helping the middle class and people in need. This is America and little Scotty I hope MA send you back home.

November 5, 2011 02:53 pm at 2:53 pm |

Tree

Rick McDaniel

The Dems are so pathetic. They really think they can spend without end, and it won't matter.

Just ask Greece, how that worked out.

Rick you sound foolish. In order to make money you have to spend monies. The only person that really cares about
the middle class is our President. The GOP and little Scott Brown cares about WALL Street and big money. At less
when they do spend it is helping the middle class and people in need. This is America and little Scotty I hope MA send you back home.
I also hope that people will wake up and look at the big picture. What the Rep are doing is evil. Come 2012 they will
get behind us (devils). Obama 2012

November 5, 2011 02:58 pm at 2:58 pm |

The Greedy Old Pigs have lost their minds!

"The Dems are so pathetic. They really think they can spend without end, and it won't matter."

The only thing pathetic is your laughable disconnection with reality. You will not find a single Dem anywhere that says or believes the words you just made up. On the other hand, you WILL hear GOBP deathcult members saying incredibly stupid and false things like "tax cuts for job creators creates jobs". It's obvious you've sided with your delusional countrymen or, as I like to call them, Moron-Americans.

November 5, 2011 02:58 pm at 2:58 pm |

once upon a horse

President and GOP DemiGod Ronald Reagan was pretty wealthy and well off himself. Lookup what he said about taxing the wealthy to help a struggling economy. Drip-down economics didn't work then and sure as heck aren't working now. Yet the GOP wants the average everyday American to think that protecting the so-called job creators will make them happy to create more jobs and the economy will turn around and we'll skip happily off into the land of Oz. Well perhaps the upper 1% will do that..the rest of us are SUNK!

November 5, 2011 03:06 pm at 3:06 pm |

REG in AZ

The Republican / Tea Party should never, with a straight face, advocate "bipartisanship" as the word should literally stick in their throat. The truth is that we do really need bipartisanship and that it is the way our government is suppose to work, productively. Since 2009 the Republicans have stubbornly, arrogantly and totally irresponsibly blocked and faulted every effort while putting their political ambitions above all else, at whatever the costs to the majority (99%) and country, They have even aggressively intimidated and coerced their own, squelching individual consciences, to assure unity behind the interests of "the few", their strong supporters and who "pull their strings". If the voters fail to see and understand these facts, then we are very apt to be returned to "more of the same", Bush-Cheney style, that got us where we are and that would be a continuing catastrophe for the majority, moving us further towards being a two-class society with "the few" competing in having it all and the majority struggling to survive.

November 5, 2011 03:13 pm at 3:13 pm |

tcaros

There's alot of angry people out there. They are angrier at the Republicans.
We may see the next election as a cleaning out of the Republcians in the House.